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Thursday, 24 March 2016

The Man with the Screaming Brain (2005) review by Eric Hyde.

"Sounds like there is some shizzle going on down there my nizzle" -Pavel.

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

The name of the film says it all. It's a B-movie, so it makes perfect sense to have the king of B-movies, Bruce Campbell, to star in, write and direct it. Bruce plays William, who is on a business trip with his wife in Bulgaria. They end up hiring Yegor to be their taxi driver for the day. On one of their trips through town, they drive through a Gypsy town which is a small community of, what else, Gypsy's. They almost run over one woman, that is revealed to have once been engaged to Yegor. She is also the housekeeper of the hotel William and his wife are staying at.

William catches her stealing a ring he bought for his wife. He chases her outside the hotel, but she ends up nearly killing him with a severe blow to the back of the head, taking off part of his head as well. Yegor sees this and ends up getting killed by her. William dies in the hospital later. Across town, Dr. Ivanov (wonderfully played by Stacey Keach) and his sidekick Pavel are trying to make brain transplants on humans successful. They hear of William and Yegor's death and decide to steal their bodies to make the operation work. Lo and behold, it does. Now both William and Yegor's thoughts occupy William's body. They must work together to find the woman who killed them and get revenge, but they also must deal with getting ill, due to them sharing the same brain cells.

This is obviously a homage to those cheesy sci-fi movies from the 1950s, by the way it was written and shot. The budget was almost non-existent, but it worked. The acting was surprisingly good. Bruce is in top form as always, and throws in a lot of slap-stick (circa Evil Dead II) when he has to fight with Yegor for control of what is now their body. Everyone else is in fine shape acting-wise as well. Very well done all-round.

On a side note, I know Bruce is the star, but Ted Raimi as Pavel owns the movie. He talks in a Snoop Dogg-type dialogue and is so funny. I can honestly say I busted up EVERY time he was on screen (trust me on this). So in closing, I say this movie was surprisingly a great way to spend 90 mins. Worth checking out or even owning.